Crypto-Mormons or Pseudo-Mormons?

Western Folklore, Summer 2002 by Eliason, Eric A, Browning, Gary

Further, Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 short novel about polygamy, A Study in Scarlet (Krasnoe po belomu), appeared in a Russian translation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Russian readers were captivated by the demonizing portrayal of a despotic Brigham Young requiring, through threat of murder by secret Mormon assassins or "Danites," an upright widower, who opposed plural marriage, to give his beautiful adopted daughter to a polygamist.20 A Study in Scarlet, featuring for the first time Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, was far more popular in Russia than in America and has remained so to the present. A Russian rock band called "Dr. Watson" has enjoyed some success, and a film based on the novel is still occasionally shown on Russian television. When one asks an educated Russian what he or she knows about the Mormons, two frequent answers are polygamy and A Study in Scarlet.21

In Russia as elsewhere, polygamy forms an ongoing central feature of the Mormon stereotype. However, other, more positive elements have come to figure prominently in more recent years. These features include a strong work ethic, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, strict discipline and unswerving obedience to a strong leader, a reputation for building close-knit, mutually supportive communities, and a common goal of creating a materially abundant heaven on earth. This perceived uniqueness has spawned articles and TV documentaries on the blossoming of Utah's desert into a somewhat overstated paradise of wealth and comfort (Browning 1997:300).

Along with the stereotypical images mentioned above, some contemporary uses of the term Mormon shows a basic unfamiliarity with the American religious landscape. As elsewhere in Europe, the Russian subtitles of popular American movies such as Harrison Ford's Witness and Randy Quaid's Kingpin, which depict stereotypes of German-American pietism, translate Amish and Mennonite as Mormon. In these cases, Mormon seems to be used broadly and clumsily to refer to an old-fashioned and peculiar American religion.

A history of loose usage of the term Mormon coupled with evolving media images of Latter-day Saints has provided a variety of stereotypical motifs that appear in the various meanings of the term Mormon as it is used today in Russia. Russians have found a useful resource in Mormon as an epithet with which to brand local groups that show features similar to stereotypes of Latter-day Saints.

HOW INDIGENOUS RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS GROUPS CAME TO BE CALLED "MORMONS"

The successful importation of stereotypical images from America coupled with a history of indigenous religious groups with seeming similarities to American Latter-day Saints has created an environment charged with the possibility of Russians applying the term Mormon to particular fellow countrymen, even though they are not Latter-day Saints. But this possibility provides no evidence of how such connections were first made. Written sources are few, but two religious studies scholars at Orenburg State University, Viktor Vladimirovich Kovalenko and lakov Vladimirovich Riabinovich, independently provide the following explanation (Kovalenko 2000; Riabinovich 2000).